Practically a Spa Day

One of the perks of living with a chronic lung disease is that you can occasionally book a day off work while your doctor runs a garden hose down your throat and takes a look around. I try to think of it as a spa day, with my own handsome chauffeur to drive me around. 

We rise at stupid o’dark in the morning for the drive to Grace Hospital & Day Spa, and I hope my doc is getting a good sleep. A nice lady who calls me “Hon” checks me in. A fellow appropriately named Manny leads me into the prepping area where he gives me one of those fashionable one-color-suits-all, one-size-fits-none gowns. A nurse tucks a warm blanket around me to lull me into thinking she’s on my side. Then she sticks a needle in the back of my hand, a blood pressure cuff on my arm, and a clothes pin on my finger. Another expertly steers me into the treatment room. I assume the rubber chicken stuck to the ceiling is to boost patient confidence in the skill level of medical professionals.

My doc hands me a shot glass full of vile stuff to gargle. This numbs the back of my throat, which deactivates my gag reflex…although yours is probably kicking in about now. After he introduces a drug to my I.V., the colorful supply bins on the shelf start dancing a mildly hypnotic jitterbug.

They have me clamp down on a mouth guard, like a football player. Then a teensy-weensy camera goes down my gullet, and I see exactly what the doctor sees on the monitor in front of me. Of course, by this time, I am so looped I think I’m watching a documentary on cave exploration. Every time the doc squirts down more saline solution, I cough and the TV screen goes all snowy, like our old black and white used to do every time our next-door neighbor, Eddie Haddad, used his electric razor. Frustrated us kids to no end if we were in the middle of Bonanza.

Anyway, the whole deal is done before I have time to enjoy the sauna or mineral pool or a manicure. I’m wheeled to the recovery room which I’ll share with seven of my new closest friends who have also been scoped, although it’s not polite to ask where. I’m given another warm blanket. This is followed by a pleasant, dozy hour of quietly contemplating the meaning of everything. A cool glass of apple juice confirms that my swallowing mechanism is up and running again. 

I’m unhooked from all tubes and set free to dress and leave the spa—with some precautions, like no driving for 24 hours. Why couldn’t they say, “no cooking?”

On the ride home, a song comes on CHVN:

You are the way, You are the truth
You are the breath inside my lungs
You give me strength when I am weak
You are the one who lifts me up. (from the song Shelter by Carollton)

I thank God for my lungs, my driver, a sunny day, a job with sick benefits, and for my good doctor and nurses. I can feel grateful and laugh at all this because I know that the one who’s ultimately in control is the same one who’s holding me in his everlasting arms.

Contact me if you’re facing your first bronchoscopy. I’m an old pro—and it’s practically a day at the spa.

Living with Chronic Nocturnal Positional Paroxysmal Bechesthesis

It started some 15 years ago.

     I would start coughing as soon as I lay down. Inconvenient and annoying, but not a huge deal. The professionals suggested it might be some mild type of asthma I'd just have to learn to live with. I did.

     Then one fall I went on a weekend retreat with several girlfriends at a cozy family cabin at Clear Lake. Since three of us were sharing a room, I crawled into my sleeping bag and warned the other two about my coughing habit.

     One of them, a nurse I'll call Marci, took on a most somber tone.

     "Oh," she said. "You have Chronic Nocturnal Positional Paroxysmal Bechesthesis."

     My inner drama queen immediately took the spotlight. This sounded serious. How much time did I have left? Months? Days? Should I be quitting my job, putting my affairs in order? No matter what, I would be brave.

     "Really?" I said. "What's that?"

     "It means you cough when you lie down," Marci said.

     The other friend, whom I'll call Lisa, let out a snort heard in Toronto and the two of them started chortling so hard they rolled off their beds, which in turn got me laughing so hard I started a coughing fit that lasted long into the night. Which, in turn, made them howl even harder. You get the picture. Good times.

     I'm not laughing so much now.

     Frightening new symptoms had me visiting the doctor, who ordered a chest x-ray. "Something unusual going on in your lungs" led to a CT scan. Of course, each of these steps is separated by weeks, during which one becomes convinced one is dying and every hangnail and eye twitch becomes yet another symptom. The internet is most helpful in self-diagnosis of anything a hypochondriac might fancy.

     The scan results were both comforting and confusing. Good news, it doesn't look like cancer. Weird news, we don't know what it is. So next week I see a specialist, who will most likely stick a garden hose down my gullet and I may just come home that day still in the dark.

     I share this because anyone who has reached my age has probably already played this waiting game and may be there now. This "how sick am I, anyway?" business is distracting, isn't it? But here's the thing. From the moment we're born, we are all terminal. We don't know when or how, but we will all die. Why we act like this is a big secret puzzles me. Occasionally contemplating a face-to-face meeting with our Maker is not a bad thing. Learning to wait isn't easy, but it's not a bad thing. Accepting that I don't have to know everything is not a bad thing. Appreciating each breath as a gift from my Creator is not a bad thing. The only "bad" thing is wasting an experience by not growing through it and not sharing it with others.

     So, at the risk of losing readers to boredom...and at the risk of feeling like an idiot should this turn out to be nothing... I'll share. Maybe we can learn and grow together.